In this paper, we review the sustainable development content of regional trade agreements (RTAs) globally using a new ESCAP RTA Text Analysis tool, followed by a comparative analysis of sustainable development related provisions in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and two other recent “mega” regional trade agreements (RTAs), namely the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the European Union – Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EU – Japan EPA).

This study attempts to analyse the economy wide impact of Indo-Pacific alliance between India and rest of the 45 participating countries. We introduce four simulation scenarios in the general equilibrium model. First scenario is the one in which India bilaterally liberalizes trade in terms of tariffs liberalization alone and then removal of tariffs and reduction of non-tariff barriers together with all the countries of Indo-Pacific region. Second scenario is when India bilaterally liberalizes trade with all the Asian countries of the Indo-Pacific region.

In light of the spread of Covid-19 cases in India during the second wave, the Government of India (GOI) decided to negotiate for an IPR waiver under section 1 (copyright and related rights), 4 (industrial designs), 5 (patents), and 7 (protection of undisclosed information) of TRIPS Agreement under the World Trade Organization (WTO). The expectation of the GOI is that the proposed IPR waiver would allow more firms to come forward to manufacture vaccines, medicines, and other COVID-19 related medical items, which would in turn augment their availability at an affordable price.

Over the last three years, trade tensions between the United States (US) and China have transformed a fairly open bilateral trading environment into a rather protectionist one. The new administration of the United States has maintained most of the bilateral tariffs and non-tariff barriers put in place by the previous administration. Moreover, incentives to diversify trade partners and localisation have been intensified following COVID-19-induced global supply-chain disruptions.

In this paper, we utilize ESCAP (2020)’s framework of Digital and Sustainable Regional Integration Index version 1 (DigiSRII 1.0) to uncover digital economy integration trends across Asia-Pacific region. The results show that Asia and the Pacific has progressed well on conventional digital economy integration, especially due to significant improvements on digital-economy infrastructure and ICT goods trade liberalization.

Digitally deliverable services play a growing role in export-driven production in the FEALAC region, but digitally deliverable services from Latin America are used only to a limited extent by producers in Asia, and vice versa. However, this disguises the fast growth in Latin American-Asian digitally deliverable services trade in the past 15 years. Asian manufacturing, agricultural and services exporters have significantly expanded their sourcing from providers in Costa Rica, Chile and Colombia, while Latin American producers have increased sourcing from China, the Philippines and Japan.

The governance of international trade incurs major costs, including to the environment. Global supply chains are complex, and traditionally involve the printing, dispatching, processing, exchanging, and ultimately discarding of vast quantities of paper documents. Trade facilitation, and particularly the implementation of cross-border paperless trade, have the potential to significantly reduce these environmental burdens.

This paper examines trade integration of East Asian countries through the lens of global value chains (GVCs). It first gauges the extent and involvement of trade in value-added (TiVA) for East Asian countries. The analysis confirms that reliance on backward GVC participation outside of the region still looms large in East Asia.  This implies, in addition to deepening intraregional integration, linking with global trade and production networks remains important. 

Bay of Bengal countries have been affected heavily by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. This article argues that the regional cooperation could help in reducing the costs of pandemic-driven barriers. The responses to the Corona pandemic also suggest a greater scope of regional cooperation among the countries in the Bay of Bengal region. Regional integration may help the Bay of Bengal countries overcome divisions that impede the flow of trade in goods and services, people and ideas, particularly when all members have been facing a common challenge to beat the Coronavirus pandemic.